A Pioneering Nonprofit Consultant Looks for a ‘Last Big Project’

When Jan Masaoka became the executive director of CompassPoint Nonprofit Services in 1993, the idea that charities could benefit from the guidance of consultants was still relatively new. Fast forward 13 years, and nonprofit groups routinely hire outside advisers.

“There was a period when I started in the field 15 years ago when people were very skeptical of consulting and technical assistance,” says Ms. Masaoka. “People would say things like, ‘Why would we ever need a facilitator?’ Over time the idea that nonprofit leaders can benefit from management-skills training has really been embraced.”

It is a trend that CompassPoint, a training, consulting, and research organization with headquarters in San Francisco, has both participated in and documented. Under Ms. Masaoka’s leadership, CompassPoint, founded in 1975 as an offshoot of the Support Center of San Francisco, saw its annual budget rise from $650,000 to more than $4-million. And the group’s studies of nonprofit management are widely read.

Now Ms. Masaoka is moving on, although she continues to write and edit Board Café, a popular electronic newsletter for nonprofit boards that goes to 44,000 subscribers. The position she left paid $104,715, according to the most recent information the group filed with the Internal Revenue Service.

Her departure isn’t without a certain irony. In March, CompassPoint released a comprehensive survey of nonprofit executives that found 75 percent of them plan to leave their jobs within five years. But while many of the charity leaders who participated in the survey cited fund raising or a lack of support from their boards as the reason for their anticipated job transitions, Ms. Masaoka chose to leave CompassPoint for a more positive reason.

“I feel like I have time in my life for one more big thing,” says Ms. Masaoka, who is 54. “If I want to do something that takes 10 or 15 years, I figure I’d better start now.”

As she looks ahead, she says that she’s keeping her options open, but she has definitely ruled out one particular career choice: consulting. “If I wanted to consult to nonprofits I would have stayed at CompassPoint,” she says.

In an interview, Ms. Masaoka discussed her career, her plans, and her predictions for the nonprofit world.

It’s now routine for charities to turn to consultants for help. Is that a good thing?

We’ve definitely gone through a period where people have embraced the idea of bringing in outsiders for help with management skills. I think it comes from the baby-boom generation that ended up running nonprofits but didn’t necessarily have any management experience. The baby boomers had to be coaxed a little, but in some ways the pendulum has swung too far and people now have too much faith in the strategic plans and consulting and have neglected the importance of execution.

Sometimes it seems like every bright young person out there today wants to be an academic, a consultant, or a program person at a foundation. But we need our best people in the nonprofit sector to run human-service and civil-rights organizations. We need people who know how to organize a march on state government or can run a methadone clinic.

Which of your accomplishments at CompassPoint are you most proud of?

It’s the way that we’ve geared the content of our work to help groups that work with communities of color. These groups represent the future of social-change work, and the most important thing you can do is help to strengthen these groups.

For example, when we wanted to teach fund-raising techniques to people of color and their organizations, we knew that you couldn’t just teach the conventional fund-raising materials. They need a different strategy and a different approach. A mainstream organization probably has some wealthy people on the board and has a donor base. An organization that works with communities of color probably relies on government money and has clients on its board. But that’s not a bad thing. It means that these groups are positioned to have board members be leaders in the work itself. You also have people who are well-positioned to lead a constituency.

Why have you been critical of the power that many foundations wield over charities?

First let me just say that I’m not a person with a lot of sour grapes. I’ve been successful in the nonprofit sector, including with fund raising. But let me tell you how often I’ve had to humiliate myself or suffer egregious insults or game-playing at the hands of foundation staff.

Look, I don’t mind hard work — none of us does. Nonprofit staff and executive directors are basically like people toiling in the fields, and foundations are sort of like rich bankers. Why do family farms hate bankers? Because they show up at the farm to tell us how to do things and that they’re raising the interest rates. It’s the combination of arrogance and control over capital. Foundations understandably want to get the most bang for their buck, but what happens is that that structure leads to many, many small organizations, and it ends up rewarding organizations whose lead skill is the ability to network with foundations.

Any predictions on the next trends in the nonprofit world?

I think we’re going to see foundations increasingly doing program work directly. The Pew Charitable Trusts, for example, recently changed its legal status for just this reason. And I have a feeling that once foundations start trying to do their own program work you’re going to see them being much more forgiving when things go wrong.

There’s a foundation in California that recently started a new program area, and it took them a year and a half to find someone to run it. Can you imagine if they had given a grant to a nonprofit and they spent a year and half to hire someone to implement it? The foundation would have been furious.

Do you have any concerns about the prejudices you’ll face as you re-enter the job market?

Age, gender, and race are always a factor in any job. Unfortunately when gender and age come together there is enormous discrimination. A million people have asked me if I’m retiring, but no one asks a 54-year-old man that.

In fact, I know a man who just got hired to be an executive director, and he’s 76. But men never seem to hire a woman who is older than they are unless it’s to be a secretary. That said, I know I have a last big project in me. There’s a job out there for me to fill.

ABOUT JAN MASAOKA, FORMER EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, COMPASSPOINT NONPROFIT SERVICES, SAN FRANCISCO

Education: Has a bachelor of arts degree in Japanese studies from San Francisco State University and is pursuing a doctorate in public administration at Golden Gate University, also in San Francisco.

Previous work experience: Taught classes on nonprofit management at Golden Gate University and ran a small consulting firm that worked with nonprofit organizations.

First book she plans to read in her free time: One of her favorites, Creation, by Gore Vidal.

Future plans: “I plan to walk down the street and see what looks good. That’s how I feel about my next job.”

Alternative career she might have pursued: Print journalist. “I would love to have been an influential writer like Nicholas Lemann.”